Chilly 'Foxcatcher' Recalls Murder of Dave Schultz

ECSTATIC REVIEWS and awards predictions have followed the national release of "Foxcatcher," but be advised that it might play differently here.

The more you know about the story in question, the more you'll have to adjust to the way director Bennett Miller has chosen to revisit the 1996 cold-blooded murder of wrestler Dave Schultz by demented Main Line aristocrat John du Pont.

At trial, a jury found du Pont to be culpable but mentally ill, and mentally ill he clearly was. So its probably fruitless to search for a rational motivation for his actions.

Even so, those who pored over details of the crime might be a bit baffled by the movie's lack of interest in the events/forces that may have led to du Pont's sudden, chilling murder of Olympic medalist Schultz, whom he'd hired to coach and train at his wrestling facility, called Foxcatcher.

He shot Schultz three times, with all the passion of a man watering the lawn. This after pulling up in his Town Car and saying:

"You have a problem with me?"

"Foxcatcher," answers that question in the affirmative. It has a big problem with du Pont, and uses him a pointed symbol here of a crazed, predatory, wealthy elite.

First by reminding us what it's like to be broke. The movie opens with Dave's brother Mark (Channing Tatum), himself an Olympic champion, speaking at a high school, displaying his medal, collecting a pitiful honorarium then driving home in his beat-up Tercel, climbing the stairs to an shabby apartment, downing a meal of noodles and ketchup.

Then the phone rings, and it's money calling. In the form of du Pont (Steve Carell), who in an instant is flying Mark via chopper to his estate, with a small detour to fly over Valley Forge National Park.

Du Pont tells Schultz he's steeped in the values of the founding fathers, describes himself as their spiritual heir, a super-patriot who'll use the Olympics to restore America's prestige.

"My friends," he said, "call me Golden Eagle."

The movie isn't funny, but this line gets a big, uncomfortable laugh in "Foxcatcher," in part because Carell does such a skillful job of signalling du Pont's dangerously delusional persona.

The slightly creepy detachment that Carell has always exhibited as a comedian is turned here into something sinister, full of portent - Brick Tamland, with money, guns, a personal tank and a personal army of hagiographers (there's a great scene of Mark Ruffalo, as Dave Schultz, balking when asked to describe du Pont, on camera, as his mentor).

In one eerie passage, du Pont confesses to Mark that he had a single friend as a child, and later found his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) had the boy on the du Pont payroll.

Now du Pont is paying wrestlers to hang out with him. First Mark, and when that relationship sours, he summons Dave, and plays one against the other (a view disputed in Mark's new memoir "Foxcatcher," which provides a broader picture).

The movie is a truncated summary - "Foxcatcher" condenses nine years of complex interaction into what seems like nine months (du Pont's affiliation with Villanova University, and that of Mark Schultz, is not mentioned).

Again, "Foxcatcher" has bigger fish, or golden eagles, to fry.

That Valley Forge trip is no incidental detail - it's there to remind us that this country threw off the rule of insane monarch, King George. The movie's implied question: Have we, all these years later, replaced one demented, destructive aristocracy with another?

Surely being rich in the movies these days isn't what it used to be. Du Pont's estate was a short tank's drive away from the estate of Hope Scott, the inspiration for "The Philadelphia Story."

"Foxcatcher" is less enamored with high society, with its trappings. Du Pont's mansion is a creepy museum of phony trophies and stuffed animals. As Mark wanders through the trophy room, we catch a whiff of Norman Bates, and wonder if Mark is next.

It's Dave who dies, though, and though "Foxcatcher" shares some of du Pont's remote, chilly, monotone effect, there is real tragedy in the crime.

Du Pont takes a man from his family, from his brother, and we feel it. The movie's best scene features Mark and David sparring, Mark drawing blood, Dave spitting it out, moving on.

It's brotherhood, in all its complexity and depth, before misguided money and power destroys it.

Online: ph.ly/Movies